ANATOMY OF QUACKERY. 
167 
living, and occasionally to indulge in some little luxuries ; 
but, in most cases, he “grubs on,” a mere village notability, 
and seldom rises above the struggles of competition, or the 
dread of the workhouse. Another variety of the poor quack 
springs from the Doctors’ medicine-boys and livery servants, 
and the druggists’ porters. These are a grade more enter- 
prising and ambitious than those just named. By impudence 
and daring, and some bold stroke for fortune, they sometimes 
rise above their compeers in quackery, and suddenly emerge 
from rustic obscurity or suburban littleness into the full blush 
of quack-grandee-ism. In not a few cases we have met with, 
the common hedger or gardener has become an herb collector , 
then an herbalist , and, lastly, a “ Coffinite with less propor- 
tionate increase in his own revenue than in the bills of mor- 
tality of the district where he resides. Such is the origin of 
the majority of the poorer class of quacks of our villages and 
small towns. In the larger towns and more populous neigh- 
bourhoods an entirely different race of quacks appears. Here 
we have men who make the same pretensions and display as 
the more notorious London quacks. Between the two ex- 
tremes there are numerous grades of ignorance and success, 
all equally dirty in their practices, and equally unworthy and 
despicable. It has been our lot to see a great deal of pro- 
vincial as well as of metropolitan quackery ; but if we were 
asked, “ What description of quacks are the most dangerous 
and culpable?” we should be unable to answer the question. 
The vagabond who vends his “ worm-cakes” at sixpence the 
packet, inflicts as great an injury on one class of society as 
does he of the gilded mansion with his costly balm of Syriacum 
on another. The proprietors of soothing-syrups, vegetable 
pills, specific lotions, and universal ointments, are equally 
despicable and degraded, and the effects of their doings are 
the same, whether they live at the village of “ Clist,” or in 
the town of Liverpool. The humbler quack quacks the 
villager out of his hard-earned shillings ; the quack kings do 
the same for the citizen with his gold. 
Although, as just pointed out, quacks abound everywhere, 
yet there appears to be some localities in which they are more 
numerous than in others. Cities, manufacturing towns, and 
seaports, are the most fertile hot-beds of this species of fungi. 
As we cannot possibly run through the kingdom, and bring 
every appropriate example before the reader, we shall content 
ourselves with noticing one of each class of places alluded to. 
Let us drop on three at random, Exeter, Leicester , Liverpool ; — ■ 
one of our oldest cathedral towns, one of our busiest manufac- 
tories, and one of our largest ports. What see we ? Liverpool 
